Something tied to beauty and nature and power- and sparsity.
This is the second time that I've traveled to Iceland; the second time that I've spend many quiet moments staring out windows and absorbing, thinking, feeling- but somehow not really processing. It is the same exact phenomenon I experienced the first time I was here:
I watched, I witnessed, but I couldn't testify. I can't testify.
The thing about Iceland is that until you've been, until you've driven through the empty, achingly foreign countryside, or walked on a glacier or under a waterfall, or sat noticing your feeling of diminishment in the face of such wonder... it's just another stop.
A cool one, pardon the pun, but ultimately just another small island in a big world. And on my word, it is so much more than that.
These words.
Or these.
If you don't trust my current word, trust those words of a vibrant, ancient, wild 28 year old, running through a vibrant, ancient, wild place. I spent much longer in Iceland when I was last there, but it's no less flooring and absorbing when you only have a weekend. It is more frenetic, a frantic pace set by frantic people looking to do as much as humanly possible. But still no less profound. If anything, the brief visitor feels Iceland with an intensity unknown to the slower, more careful traveler.
What I take away from Iceland, all the time, over time, is the almost unbearable bittersweetness of a land that has is so different, unique unto itself. The bitter tang of frigid cold mixed with the sweet mythology of history. It's the landscape of time and magic.
Time and magic.
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